Updates and Newsletters: The main news stories from the major sources, selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Michael Novakhov ("Mike Nova") | Public RSS Feeds on the various topics of Global Security | Topics oriented news reviews

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) leader, Salih Muslim, Friday called on Iraqi Kurds to cross the border and fight with their YPG militia against the invading Turkish army in northern Syria. The PYD leader issued his appeal to Irbil from Brussels where he told reporters he had evidence of links between the Erdogan government in Ankara and the Islamic state terrorists. DEBKAfile: The autonomous Kurdish Republic of Iraq’s Peshmerga force is 50,000 strong.

President Obama objected Thursday to a new governing board to oversee health care at the Department of Veterans Affairs, saying it would undermine the VA secretary's authority and make it harder for the scandal-ridden agency "to implement transformative change."

The president said the recommendation by a national commission for a ...

I'm talking about the opportunity for foreign regimes to take advantage of the weakness of the Obama administration. Whether it's through incompetence or the result of a some misguided agenda, President Obama has weakened the power of the United States ...

Russia has stoked conflict in Ukraine and conducted unannounced military drills in recent weeks, displaying increased aggression ahead of a key economic summit in China where Vladimir Putin will meet with western leaders who have been unable to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.

Tensions over Russia’s provocative behavior are high ahead of the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, where leaders from 20 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany will gather on Sept. 4 and 5. The war in Ukraine, as well as strained relations between Russia and NATO, are likely to influence the meeting.

It was at the same summit in 2014 when western leaders criticized Russia for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, leading Putin to leave the two-day meeting ahead of schedule. Russia has been subject to U.S. and EU sanctions for its role in the Ukraine conflict, and the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday expanded its sanctions lists to punish more Russian individuals and entities for the continued violence.

Sanctions, thus far, have been insufficient in deterring Russia’s occupation of Crimea or accompanying violence that has persisted for more than two years. NATO member states in Eastern Europe have also grown increasingly weary of the possibility of Russian invasion, leading the alliance to bolster military forces there, in defiance of Russian warnings.

On the sidelines of the G-20 summit, Putin is likely to meet with President Obama, who has been critical of Russia’s behavior in Ukraine but has not given lethal aid to Ukrainian troops, despite pressure from lawmakers and some in his own administration. Putin is also due to hold bilateral meetings with British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande.

Merkel and Hollande said ahead of the summit that they remain “extremely concerned” about the situation in eastern Ukraine, renewing calls for the implementation of a ceasefire deal that has long been ineffective at curtailing fighting.

It is unclear whether leaders will prioritize discussions on the Ukraine situation, given other matters of international concern, such as the Syrian civil war in which Russia has intervened to prop up Bashar al Assad’s regime.

Dalibor Rohac, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe at the American Enterprise Institute, said that he does not expect western leaders to take a hard line on rebuking Russia’s actions in Ukraine at the summit.

“Of course Ukraine is still on the agenda, but I don’t expect major pushback from the West. There are rising constituencies in all of these countries, mostly in the world of business, who want to return to business as usual,” Rohac said. “With Syria, divisions inside the EU, Brexit, U.S. presidential election, not many remember—and fewer care about—the conflict in eastern Ukraine.”

The fighting in Ukraine escalated in mid-August. Russia on Aug. 10 accused Ukrainian intelligence agents of plotting terror attacks on critical elements of Crimea’s infrastructure and then began tostage thousands of military forces near Russia’s border with Ukraine. The accusations, which Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described as baseless and a “pretext for more military threats,” led Ukraine to order its troops on high alert in anticipation of potential conflict.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s military said Wednesday that 100,000 Russian troops are stationed in Crimea, separatist-controlled parts of Donbas, and along the border with Ukraine. He also said that around 700 tanks are present in separatist-held areas of Donbas.

“Effective deterrence requires more than talk,” Rohac said of the western response to the conflict. “In the Ukrainian context, lethal aid is needed, as well as commitment to shepherd the country into the Western geopolitical space, through EU accession talks, prospect of NATO membership.”

Russian military forces have also been participating in unannounced military drills for the last week in the central, southern, and western military districts of the country. The spontaneous “combat readiness” exercises, which Putin ordered last Thursday, involved air forces and naval forces in the Black and Caspian Seas and were said by Moscow to prepare troops to protect Russia’s territory national interests in the event of security threats.

The drills, which ended Wednesday, drew ire from NATO’s No. 2 official, who said this week that Russia has conducted unannounced military drills “with increased frequency” and has as a result exacerbated tensions with the alliance. NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow said that roughly a dozen such drills have occurred over the last two years.

“If there is an interest in Moscow in stability and predictability, then these exercises are not the way to go,” Vershbow said, describing the alliance’s relationship with Russia as “very unsatisfactory.”

“These are certainly making Eastern Europeans understandably nervous, especially given that Russia would enjoy a significant tactical advantage over NATO should a conflict in the Baltic region take place,” Rohac said. “Together with the frequent airspace incursions there is a real risk of a human error that could lead to war.”

The Ukraine conflict has raised concerns among NATO members about the possibility of Russia invading other countries in Eastern Europe.

NATO member states in July agreed to deploy four battalions in Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Russia responded to the planned deployment by pledging to create three new Army divisions in its western and southern military districts to counter the bolstered force.

Uzbekistan appeared to be preparing for a state funeral after saying Friday that the country's president is critically ill. Islam Karimov has run an authoritarian government in the Central Asian nation since 1989, and cultivated no apparent successor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin struck a conciliatory tone before talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a territorial dispute that's prevented the countries from signing a World War II peace treaty.

The author, a former British intelligence officer, examines the legends which have accumulated around thirteen people accused of espionage and condemned by the press and public opinion as spies. Among the more notable cases ore those of Dreyfus, Treibitsch Lincoln, Bruno Pontecorvo, Rutland, Elsbeth Scragmuller, Guy Burgess, and Alger Hiss.

ACLU concerned about FBI access to Ohio records, photosColumbus DispatchThe American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio says allowing the FBI to access Ohio's photographic records isn't a good idea. One of the organization's concerns is the FBI's use of sophisticated electronic facial recognition software on photos of people ...and more »

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday, that he did not know who was behind the hacking of U.S. Democratic Party organizations but it was important the information had been made public, Bloomberg news agency reported on Friday.
In an interview two days before a G20 meeting in China with U.S. President Barack Obama, Putin said it could be impossible to establish who engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails but it was not done by the Russian government.
"Does it even matter who hacked this data?" Putin asked. "The important thing is the content that was given to the public."
"There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it," he added. “But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.”

Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.

IRAQ and SYRIA

Turkey’s President Erdoğan denied claims by US officials that Syrian Kurdish forces in northern Syria have withdrawn east of the Euphrates River today, reports the AP.

Turkey has removed the Islamic State and the Kurds from a 150 mile square area of northern Syria, Erdoğan also said this morning. [Reuters]

The Syrian rebel assault in Hama was the largest coordinated rebel assault in the area since 2014, reports Al Jazeera. The capture of at least 14 villages in four days prompted the Syrian government to retaliate with heavy air strikes yesterday.

An intensification of the Syrian government’s strategy of refusing access to besieged towns by aid agencies will lead to mass evacuations along the lines of that seen in the town of Darayya last week, the UN has predicted. Patrick Wintour reports at the Guardian.

The UN Security Council will hold a meeting to take stock of the Syria conflict, now in its sixth year, and discuss prospects for ending it, on September 21, the AP reports.

Obama is under pressure to score a “major win” against the Islamic State in Iraq before he leaves office, Nancy A. Youssef writes at The Daily Beast. US generals are promising that the city of Mosul will be rid of the Islamic State soon, while politicians are pushing for the move to take place before the Obama administration terms, according to one official.

US-led airstrikes continue. US and coalition forces carried out eight airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on August 31. Separately, partner forces conducted eight strikes against targets in Iraq. [Central Command]

TURKEY

Turkey’s President Erdoğan and President Obama are due to meet on Sept.4 on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in China, reports the Hürriyet Daily News, at a time when relations between the two NATO allies are strained. US Ambassador to Ankara John Bass and Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirloğlu met yesterday to conduct a general assessment of issues that concern both sides, in an effort to smooth the ground ahead of the Presidents’ meeting, according to diplomatic sources.

Clashes between Turkey’s military and Kurdish militia in southeast Turkey have left a total of 20 Kurds and one Turkish soldier dead in southeast Turkey, reports the AP.

Turkey has begun a process to patch up relations with Egypt and Syria, a further shift in Turkey’s regional foreign policy toward increasing pragmatism, reports Reuters.

PAKISTAN

Pakistan says it has thwarted an attempt by the Islamic State to expand its network into the country,Pakistan’s military arresting 309 suspects, Islamic State members from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan among them, a military spokesperson said yesterday. [AP’s Munir Ahmed]

A suicide bombing at a court in the northern Pakistani city of Mardan has killed at least 12 people and injured over 50, according to officials. [BBC] Militant group Jamaat-Ur-Ahrar has claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters reports.

CHINA

The Chinese air force is developing a new type of long-range bomber, state media reported today. [AP]

China has set the trial date for this month for a US businesswoman accused of spying, Reutersreports. The US State Department has said it is concerned for her welfare.

China is tightening regulation of online maps to clarify its territorial claims and protect “national sovereignty and interests,” Chinese state media has reported today. [AP]

CYBERSECURITY, PRIVACY and TECHNOLOGY

Romanian hacker “Guccifer,” responsible for revealing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, was sentenced to over four years in federal prison yesterday, theWashington Post’s Rachel Weiner and Spencer S. Hsu report.

Russia’s President Putin has no idea who hacked the D.N.C., but it is important that the information had been made public, he said in an interview reported by Russian media today. [Reuters]

US law enforcement purchases spy equipment enabling the interception of wireless calls and texts, the location of people via their cellphones, and the jamming of cellular communications in an areafrom British defense firm Cobham, a confidential 120-page catalogue reveals. This shows the wide range of electronic surveillance tactics used by police and militaries in the US and abroad, reports Sam Biddle at the Intercept.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

The White House’s statement that it “did not and will not allow Iran to skirt” its commitments under the nuclear deal in response to the report from the Institute for Science and International Study would be “more credible” if the Obama administration had not agreed to allow Iran to inspect its own nuclear-related military facilities, and if Iran weren’t testing ballistic missiles as a result of another nuclear side-deal, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

NATO needs to be able to regularly advise Afghan corps as well as occasionally push training and advice down to Afghan kandaks – units of 600 soldiers – US Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, NATO alliance spokesperson in Afghanistan, said yesterday, since Afghan security forces continue to have leadership problems. Julian E. Barnes reports at the Wall Street Journal.

Misrata militias spearheading the ousting of the Islamic State from Libya’s Sirte are claiming the city for themselves now that the terrorist group is all but removed, report Maria Abi-Habib and Hassan Morajea at the Wall Street Journal. Once the battle at Sirte is over, the Misrata militias will head for Libya’s capital, Tripoli, commanders say.

Ex-Guantánamo Bay detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab is planning a hunger strike now that he has been returned to Uruguay after going missing for several weeks, demanding that he be allowed to leave the South American country. [AP’s Leonardo Haberkorn]

The US is providing logistical support and political cover for the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen conflict, the leader of the Houthis has said. [Reuters]

Extremism, Turkey, relations with Russia and global strategy are on the cards for foreign ministers of EU nations when they meet in Slovakia for a two-day meeting today, reports the AP.

A joint military exercise in the US with Israeli, Pakistani and UAE fighter pilots last month was “professional” even though the countries do not share diplomatic ties with Israel, the Israeli air force has said. [AP’s Daniel Estrin]

Peace talks with Muslim separatists suspected of a string of bombings in tourist towns will go ahead,Thailand’s military government has announced. [Reuters]

Five men taken into custody in the UK on suspicion of planning acts of terrorism last Friday are to be detained in custody for another week for questioning, a judge has ruled, under laws which allow law enforcement to hold suspects for up to 14 days without charge in sufficiently serious cases. Alexis Flynn reports at the Wall Street Journal.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton raised a hefty $143 million in the month of August for her campaign and the Democratic Party.

The sum is more than she has raised ever in a month, the New York Timesreports:

August was Mrs. Clinton’s most successful fund-raising month so far, as she crisscrossed the country on a money hunt that took her to dozens of events in the summer locales of the wealthy and the well-to-do. Her efforts brought in $143 million for her campaign and for Democratic organizations, according to her campaign. That is far more than the $90 million haul Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats reported in July.

A large portion of the money Clinton raised will go to other Democratic races. Much of the money raised for her campaign will be spent in swing states, such as Ohio and Florida. The states are key to her and Donald Trump’s respective hopes of winning the White House.

Currently, Clinton has approximately $68 million in cash while $84 million is held by the two joint fundraising committees between Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Her fundraising spree took her around the country, including around Hollywood. This time spent fundraising has taken her off the campaign trail and away from voters and reporters who have questions for her surrounding the Clinton Foundation, her time at the StateDepartment, and her private email server.

French officials are withholding the identity and motive of the knifeman who critically injured a policewoman in Paris earlier Friday. They were also cagey about a similar attack in Toulouse three days ago, when a man knifed a policeman in the throat shouting “I’m sick of France!”

DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources disclose a new policy adopted by France, Germany and Belgium to abstain from giving exposure to Islamist terrorist attacks as such.

ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkeys's president accused the European Union on Friday of failing to deliver funds it promised as part of a deal to stop migrants crossing the Aegean Sea, adding to fears that the agreement which has curtailed last year's huge refugee surge to Europe's heartland is about to ...

Buses carrying about 300 Syrians living in a besieged rebel-held suburb of the capital, Damascus, began leaving the area Friday following a deal struck with the government that grants amnesty to gunmen and restores state control. An Associated Press reporter in Moadamiyeh saw security forces searching the luggage of dozens of men, women, and children before they boarded buses Friday, heading out of the suburb to shelters in a government-controlled neighborhood nearby. Moadamiyeh, which a U.N. report said was gassed with toxic sarin in 2013, has suffered a three-year government siege, leaving its estimated 28,000 residents with dwindling food and medical supplies. The first part of the deal's implementation evacuates about 300 people, including 62 gunmen who agreed to lay down their arms after taking advantage of a presidential amnesty, said the governor of rural Damascus province, Alaa Munir Ibrahim. The Moadamiyeh deal came a week after the full evacuation of the nearby rebel-held suburb Daraya, which was widely criticized as a forced displacement. The 300 people leaving Moadamiyeh are originally from Daraya, a number of whom had fled to or were stuck in Moadamiyeh after an extensive military offensive against the neighboring suburb that began earlier this year. On Syrian state TV, Ahmed Mounir, a government adviser, described the Friday evacuation as a completion of the Daraya deal. The Daraya offensive cut the suburb off from other rebel-held areas in the western suburbs of Damascus. It accelerated the surrender of the gunmen in Daraya, forcing them to reach a deal with the government which fully evacuated the nearly 4,000 people still living in a neighborhood that was once home to more than 200,000. “The heroic acts of the Syrian army in Daraya led to the achievement in Moadamiyeh,” Ibrahim, the provincial governor, told Syrian state TV. He said other “settlement” deals with rebel-held Damascus suburbs were currently under discussion, and urged other gunmen to lay down their arms. At a press conference in Geneva on Thursday, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura warned that the government's siege tactics were forcing evacuations, saying that “after Daraya, we may have other Darayas.” De Mistura's humanitarian adviser, Jan Egeland, echoed his sentiment, saying the U.N. humanitarian task force for Syria had “failed the people of Daraya.” The U.N. underlined that it had not been consulted on the Daraya deal, which it described as forced displacement. Once the 300 evacuees have been moved to government-controlled areas, under the second part of the Moadamiyeh deal gunmen who refuse to hand over their weapons will be forced to leave, likely to rebel-held parts of northern Syria. It was not clear when government security forces would take over control of the suburb. Moadamiyeh's buildings and infrastructure appeared largely intact. Local rebels had negotiated several local truces with the government starting 2012, and the suburb was spared much of the destruction and bombing that beset Daraya, a mile away. “I am very happy to get out,” said 25-year old Samira Khadra, a resident of Daraya who had moved to Moadamiyeh, as she boarded one of eight waiting green buses with her mother and children. Rajab Taysir al-Sheikh, a 55-year old resident of Daraya, said his former home was totally destroyed. He was now joining his family, evacuated last week from Daraya, in a shelter in a Damascus suburb. “Nothing remains from my house except what I am carrying: two pants and some shirts,” he said, before criticizing the rebels for provoking the government's violence. Hassan Ghandour, a former resident of Moadamiyeh and a lead negotiator on the deal, said most gunmen from Moadamiyeh are expected to stay and lay down their weapons. The deal also includes the release of detainees from Moadamiyeh currently held in government prisons.